Diary

• With Andy Coulson due before the Leveson inquiry tomorrow all eyes turn to the high court. But in the background continue the various police investigations into shenanigans at the late News of the World. Detectives have got to get on with it. And so it was, we understand, that officers from Operation Weeting – the one probing phone hacking – spent much of Wednesday in the pub, the better to understand what life was like in the inglorious past at Wapping. Reminiscing at their behest was Paul McMullan, former deputy features editor of the News of the World. He's the man who insists that people at the paper must have known that its operatives were practising the dark arts. He tells us that they talked for three hours at his pub in Dover. Alas we could not listen in. But as the man who was nicknamed "mucky", who told Lord Justice Leveson that "privacy is for paedos", one assumes he kept them entertained.

• Worrying times at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, meanwhile, where the belt-tightening has kicked in. It seems set to lose 63% of its original budget, mostly by the end of this year, resulting, some say, in a 72% cut to staff. Also the closure of its helpline, which advises people facing discrimination, and its grants programme, which funds law centres and Citizens Advice. These are crippling cuts, say employees, and as good democrats they look to Westminster for even the smallest hope of salvation. But they aren't raising their hopes too high. Last month, when Sandra Osborne, Labour MP for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, secured a Westminster Hall debate, the equalities minister Lynne Featherstone couldn't make it. She was on a four-day tour of Africa, promoting much-needed equalities.

• Good news from Nestlé, meanwhile, as the company, assailed by protesters who question its worldwide trading of baby milk, seeks to buff up its image. The multinational has begun a three-year partnership with the International Diabetes Federation. Speaking from the Swiss HQ, Nestlé's global head of public affairs Janet Voûte said: "We will work with the International Diabetes Federation to build awareness and promote healthy lifestyles including healthy nutrition and physical activity," thereby "tackling the growing challenge of chronic conditions such as overweight [sic], obesity and diabetes worldwide". Dovetails nicely with the selling of our favourite Nestlé products: Aero, Yorkie, Kit-Kat and Golden Nuggets breakfast cereal. Admirable synergy.

• Just a question: when Wayne Rooney named his racehorse Pippy, did he know the word is also slang for an intimate part of the female anatomy? And why did he bother. Today, at Chester, it cantered in last.

• Finally, as excitements resume at the Leveson inquiry, Colin Dexter, the creator of Inspector Morse, tells the Radio Times of his complicated relationship with the Mail. He says he wrote the Morse prequel, Endeavour, after a commission "from the Daily Mail, of all places". He was hesitant. "I'd rather shoot Paul Dacre than anyone else in the country, which is unfair because I've never met the man." Dexter holds strong views, rendering him "congenitally incapable of listening sympathetically to anyone in the Tory party". Strong views all round. "I don't see any hope for the human race," the author says. "We're selfish and greedy, only interested in getting a few extra quid." Him included, apparently. Back to the Mail. "I turned them down," he says. "But they made me an offer I couldn't refuse – doubled the fee."